§ Mr. HoyleTo ask the Secretary of State for Trade and Industry how many state aid applications were received in each of the last five years, broken down by region; how many were allowed in each case; and how many are awaiting decisions. [147859]
§ Mr. Mike O'BrienThe following table sets out the best available information on the number of UK notifications made to, and approved by, the European Commission over the past five years excluding agriculture, fishery and transport cases. It would not be possible to break the figures down to regions within England except at disproportionate cost. Where a notification is not clearly regionally specific it is recorded as UK-wide. In addition there were 10, 58 and 61 cases in the years 2001, 2002 and 2003 respectively deemed approved under the Block Exemption Regulations and Multisectoral Framework 2002.
516W
1999 2000 2001 2002 2003 Notified 20 26 25 40 35 Pending — 2 1 2 24 Withdrawn or negative 1 — — 1 —
1999 2000 2001 2002 2003 Approved 19 24 24 37 11 of which: UK 10 11 11 32 9 England 4 9 4 2 — Scotland — 2 3 1 — Wales 3 — — 1 1 Northern Ireland 2 2 6 1 1